Page 56 - Demo

SOME OF THE HISTORY OF THE CHANGES showing the present livery dating
in the colour scheme and branding of NZ
Express Transport is lost in the mists of time.
at’s not so surprising really, considering that the origins
of the company itself date back 150 years – making it one New Zealand’s oldest transport companies (if not THE oldest)....
And considering too that it’s been through remarkable twists and turns in ownership, location and the nature of its work – with the historic name and brand now, for instance, in the care of its fourth or fth owners.
But uncertain that some of its history has become, there remains a respectful feeling from the current owners that they are custodians of something valuable, as John Petrie – one of the group of Canterbury transport operators who bought NZ Express Transport Christchurch 12 years ago – makes clear.
“Oh, there was no doubt in our minds when we bought it that the name and brand would stay. I think it’s bloody important that it’s kept.”
And so do many others, he adds: When the company posted on Facebook that it would host a function (held last November) to mark the 150 years since New Zealand Express was founded in Dunedin, it attracted 4000 views.
Adds Petrie: “We had people ringing up – ‘oh my brothers, uncles, my aunties worked there in such and such a time...and I’ve got some photos’...And all this sort of thing went on.”
People also brought in and sent photos from over the decades – all of which, plus speeches and photos from the function and a potted history of the company, are now being compiled into a company keepsake.
One thing that remains unclear, says Petrie, is the origin of the current yellow and red colour scheme and the distinctive arrowhead-enhanced NZ Express logo.
Old photos from the 1930s through to the ‘50s indicate that the eet trucks were painted white – with the earliest photos
2 | Truck & Driver
back to the 1960s, “when there were
quite a lot of NZ Express depots around,” says Petrie.
By 1920 the company had opened branches around the country, but in the wake of the Great Depression, in the mid-1930s, all but ve were sold o to individual regional owners – although they all retained the NZ Express name (the independent operators adding their home base in brackets). And some of them continued to operate under the NZ Express name until the late 1990s.
Whenever it was rst introduced, the current NZ Express Transport logo – which features a yellow arrowhead on a red background....doubling as part of the letter E and repeated within the word Express – nearly didn’t make it into the 21st Century.
In 1999, then company GM Richard Riley revealed to NZ Truck & Driver that “a few years ago, one of the trucks was being repainted, and I suggested we should leave the motif out, because on its own it seemed a bit obscure.
“But without it, the door looked so incomplete, we retained it. It’s the sort of thing not everybody’s eyes pick up, but it’s a simple and elegant piece of design.”
While the current owners have been committed to retaining the company branding (the colour scheme and the logo), they have made a few mods – renaming the company NZ Express Transport, the signwriting featuring the word ‘Transport,’ in freehand script style.
e livery was also updated – doing away with having the yellow upper body and red lower body colours meeting in a straight line around the cabs. Says John Petrie: “We started buying some trucks and changed that a bit – dropped it to the front and swooped it up on the side of the cab. And added a pinstripe to it as well, between the yellow and the red.”
e yellow and red colours were also standardised soon after
G
N
I
S
I
E
C
N
E
G
L
L
O
E
N
C
C
E
E
R
•
•
I
N
G
N
I
H
H
E
S
I
A
N
V
I
Y
F
E
R
T
T
R
R
O
A
X
N
S
P